“Israeli leaders increasingly understand that it is in Israel’s interest for Palestinians to govern themselves, in a state that is viable, peaceful, democratic, and committed to fighting terror. Israel has to fulfill its responsibilities to help that peaceful state emerge. A new Palestinian leadership is emerging that understands — and says, in Arabic and English — that terror is not a means to Palestinian statehood, but rather the greatest obstacle to statehood.”

— The national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday, in remarks prepared for delivery to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars

The traditional seven days of mourning for 18 Jews killed in last week’s bus bombing had not yet ended when the White House distributed these remarks from President Bush’s national security adviser. Ms. Rice has responded to the attacks, it seems, by making a speech in which she demands not a thing of the Palestinian Arabs but in which she insists that Israel “fulfill its responsibilities.” What of the responsibilities of the Palestinian Authority leadership? They, after all, are the ones who failed to live up to their commitment to dismantle the terrorist groups. Yet their responsibilities go unmentioned in Ms. Rice’s prepared remarks. Rather than demand more of the Palestinian Authority, Ms. Rice praises it for things that it hasn’t actually done.

Ms. Rice claims that “A new Palestinian leadership is emerging that understands — and says, in Arabic and English — that terror is not a means to Palestinian statehood, but rather the greatest obstacle to statehood.” This is true, but that new Palestinian leadership is not the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Arafat cronies that surround him. Ms. Rice’s speech, however, is likely to be widely interpreted as referring to that Abbas leadership. And that leadership, far from fighting terror, has praised it, as a new report out this week from the Middle East Media Research Institute makes clear.

On July 24, the Palestinian Authority’s state-run television aired a video glorifying the first female suicide bomber, Wafaa Idris. According to the Memri report, the lyrics of the song on the video were “My sister Wafaa Oh revival of pride Oh flower that was on earth and ascended to the heavens…You chose Shahada [martyrdom] and in your death gave life to the power of will…Oh spirit of a magnificent people that desires self-sacrifice.”

On August 15, according to the Memri report, Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris delivered a Friday sermon at Sheikh Ijlin Mosque in Gaza City. The sermon, which was also broadcast on Palestinian Authority television, said, “Blessings to you, [sons of] the Palestinian people, people of Jerusalem who sacrifice Shahids [martyrs] in order to preserve the identity of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and its Islamic and Arab identity…The residents of Palestine and Jerusalem are the ones who preserve the existence of the Al-Aqsa Mosque…We bless you, we bless everyone whose blood flows upon this good and pure land.… Notice, Oh worshippers of Allah, the Jews are the most loathsome creatures on the face of the earth.”

The official Palestinian Authority Web site carries photographs of gun-toting Arab children, including the one below. Other Arab children attend the two summer camps named after the female suicide bomber Wafaa Idris, or the others named after “shahids” or martyrs — i.e., suicide bombers — or after the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist organization. At one such camp, according to the Memri report, “the children held a closing ceremony which included a play called “The Shahid’s Wedding”— that is, his wedding in Paradise to the 72 black-eyed virgins.

All of this would make fine grist for a speech by Mr. Bush’s national security adviser in the week after the deaths of five Americans in a suicide bomb attack. Instead Ms. Rice ignores it, claiming instead that “A new Palestinian leadership is emerging that understands — and says, in Arabic and English — that terror is not a means to Palestinian statehood, but rather the greatest obstacle to statehood.” Ms. Rice has in the past been strongly supportive of Israel in her public comments, so yesterday’s comments come as a disappointment. It’ll be illuminating to see whether the liberal press and Democratic politicians who rushed to denounce the Bush administration, and Ms. Rice in particular, for supposedly misleading the American public with respect to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions are as concerned about Ms. Rice’s accuracy on this one. Our guess is she’ll get a pass, which is too bad for both the Israeli and American victims of terror and for the genuinely new Palestinian leadership that is aching to emerge from under the boot of Mr. Abbas and the Arafat cronies.